Planning Training Exercises and Resources

Back in 2013 we released a software tool on our website called Clock Buddies. Clock Buddies refers to a traditional tool used to pair people up in a classroom setting. Each person was given a blank sheet resembling the face of a clock. Students then filled this in with their names. The clocks would then allow the teacher to group the students quickly by simply calling out a given hour; for example, the teacher would say, “pair up with your buddy at 3 o’clock”. Students would then look at their clock faces, find the name of the person written at 3 o’clock and pair up with him.

In this team building exercise, delegates work together to complete a task. It requires concentration, planning and fast execution. Here, the decisions made by one team can affect the performance of another so planning has to be as dynamic as the changing environment. This exercise is ideal to train people on quick decision making, leadership, persuasion skills and team work.

Is there such a thing as a good career or a bad career? Is there such a thing as a good hobby or a bad hobby? Such choices are often very personal so can we really say what is good for people and what is bad? Probably not, but we all know that these days a lot of people desire “success”. It seems that with success comes a lot of happiness affecting all areas of life. It is not the only way to gain happiness but it certainly can lead to it. Success is not always about careers or jobs; it can be about anything in a person’s life; it could be success in raising good children, success in gardening, success in being a likable person, success in being the first to achieve a feat, success in being good at a given skill, success in being useful to society or simply success in being happy and getting the most from life.

With the concept of success and happiness comes options and choices. We all need to make decisions about what careers to get into, what hobbies to engage in and what to spend our finite time on. The decision means that, yes there is such a thing as a good or bad choice that can in the long run influence your happiness.

Some people seem to excel at this. They make all the right choices and it seems that the world goes out of its way to accommodate their desires. How come they succeed so well? Perhaps on further examination we can discover the underlying principles that help one make good choices.

As an example, let’s consider an episode in the life of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s. No one can dispute that he had an extraordinary life so far and with his universality and fame, it is certainly worth examining his life to see how his decisions and interests has shaped his life.

When delivering training courses, sometimes you need to get the delegates go through an exercise that involves sorting cards. Card sorting is a training activity where you get the delegates to think about a subject and vote by sorting a number of options. Sometimes they may need to generate these options before sorting them. Usually, the aim is to pick the best option or find a consensus on how to move forward.

Here, you will be introduced to a variation of card sorting that makes the process systematic for a group of delegates and allows them to make a decision collectively.

We all do this, think about our future and asking ourselves how we can improve it. That is a fair question and indeed makes perfect sense for a forward looking progressive society.

Unfortunately, it can also be a source of confusion and misguidance. The way the question is asked can easily focus attention in the wrong direction. When it comes to training or self-analysis, this is indeed something that you want to avoid.

Here, you will be presented with these kinds of questions and will learn how to formulate them correctly to get the most from them.

To run a successful face-to-face training course, you will need to go through several training exercises. These exercises can be critical in making the training more effective.

Unfortunately, many trainers underestimate the power of training exercises and most of their focus is on the content of the course or knowledge transfer. Usually, this means that they are unprepared for training exercises or simply do not think about them at the right level.

There are 6 critical areas that you need to explore to make sure that your exercises are useful and enhance learning. Missing even one of these areas can significantly affect your performance in that specific part or even the rest of the training course. Hence, it pays to know these 6 areas by heart and always consider them for every single training exercise you run.

We all tend to procrastinate when it comes to certain tasks. Procrastination is about leaving a task for a later time and instead focusing on something less important. Sometimes, you may not feel like doing something because you think it takes a long time to do it properly. You therefore put the task aside for a more suitable time later on. In chronic procrastination, that suitable time may never come!

As part of an effective time management system, you need to consider strategies in overcoming procrastination. To tackle this, you can apply tertiary prevention on procrastination. Using a variety of techniques to streamline your workflow and using carefully planned shortcuts can help you avoid behaviours that are known to add to the likelihood of procrastination. Here, you will learn about a number of strategies on task management and prioritisation.

This exercise helps the delegates to examine our changing world and provides an opportunity to discuss what it means for future. You can use this as part of a change management course or to run it for staff who are subjected to a change management programme.